Taking every thought captive for obedience to Christ (2 Cor. 10.5)

Disciplines
Writing and Politics
The disciplines of serious writing and reading are under assault these days, from many and varied quarters. Some are raising the question of whether, given existing conditions, publishing as we have known it can long survive. And the primary reason for this is not the lack of good writing, but the lack of serious readers.

Writing, you see, involves ideas and implies readers. But ideas require thinking. Thinking takes time, time that might otherwise be occupied with work or diversions. And this does not bode well for serious reading.

Politicians don’t want voters to think; they want us to feel. So they fill their campaigns and speeches with sound bites, slogans, and images of a brave new world, while their “position papers” languish unread at their websites.

Similarly, advertisers don’t want people to think, either, merely to react emotionally, and they are beginning to insinuate their presence into publishing in the same way they have managed to stage products in films.

Steven G. Kellman brings an interesting perspective to the role of politics in discouraging serious writing and reading. In the Spring 2016 issue of The Hedgehog Review, he reports that writers who seek to enter the political arena don’t do all that well (“Books and Ballots: When Writers Run for Office”). He thumbs through the history of his topic in a breezy but erudite fashion to explain, “In this country, composing poetry is a disqualification for public office.”

In the main, writers who aspire to public office are too immersed in ideas to make any progress in politics. Politics is not interested in ideas, and it doesn’t much care whether people read. Mr. Kellman blames the “leveling” air of politics for making people suspicious of those who traffic in ideas as their chosen vocation. His article illustrates the way the politicizing of American life has discouraged thoughtfulness about serious ideas – and, hence, reading.

The situation has always been thus, but it is worse today, because politics is more ubiquitous and government has extended its tentacles into every aspect of life. Since politics trucks in images and sound bites, serious writing about important issues goes largely unread.

This is not good news for writers: “Literature, once the arbiter of serious culture, if not its center, is increasingly marginalized. Books as printed texts are an endangered species, and book reading must now compete with a multitude of other activities. Authors have ceded their authority to masters of other media, mostly visual.”

Couple this with the growing practice on the part of large corporations and reputable journals of record, of eliding reportage with advertising, so that “articles” become merely extended advertisements – what’s known as “sponsored content” – and you have the prospects of a dismal future for serious writing and reading (see Jacob Silverman’s report of his experience with sponsored content in “The Rest Is Advertising,” The Baffler,No. 30).

So why do so many people continue to write?

Because it doesn’t take many people to change a culture. A relatively few thoughtful, well-informed, and determined readers can begin to experience change in their own lives, and to introduce change into their spheres of influence. The more such people read, the broader grows their horizon of possibilities for change, and the more devoted they may become to it.

Serious writers are looking for such readers, to enlist them in their views and causes. This is true as well in the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Writers such as Paul, Justin, Tertullian, Ephraim, Augustine, and other early Christian writers redirected the course of history, remade the structure of society, and reformed the manners and culture of an empire where illiteracy was the norm and few people read anything at all. Martin Luther’s tireless pen reached just enough readers to awaken Europe to the truth of the Gospel and create a movement for reformation that lasts to this day. Pamphleteers seeded colonial America with sermons and political tracts that prepared a busy, mostly rural, and largely unschooled people for a revolution that shook the world.

If the relative few who read the ideas of such careful writers were able to achieve so much in their day, then there is hope for writers and readers today. As Mr. Kellman explains, paraphrasing Milton, “They also serve who only sit and write.”

Serious readers serve powerfully, and with transforming effects, as they read, think, pray, and act on ideas to take them captive for obedience to Christ. And serious writers are still looking for such readers.

For reflection
1.  How do you try to put to use the ideas you encounter in the things you read?

2.  Why is it so important that reading Christians read their Bibles most of all (cf. Ps. 36.9)?

3.  How can believers encourage one another to be better readers?

Why not start a reading group of your own? Make some copies of today’s The Week and share it with friends. Use it to start a reading and discussion group.

An excellent book to use in starting a reading book is T. M.’s The Ground for Christian Ethics. It’s brief, conversational, and deals with foundational ideas relating to how we are to follow Jesus as His disciples. Order your copy by clicking here.

The Week features insights from a wide range of topics and issues, with a view to equipping the followers of Christ to take every thought captive for Jesus. Please prayerfully consider supporting The Fellowship of Ailbe by sending a gift to The Fellowship of Ailbe, 19 Tyler Drive, Essex Junction, VT 05452.